No time to waste. Up and at 'em. Forget socializing, weekends are for catching up on chores, and we did. Tedious, yes, but lord knows we have to do it at least once a month. Next lifetime I want a domestic partner who is as tidy and organized as I am. By the time we were done the place looked pretty respectable, just in time for our pet sitter who came by to get the lowdown on what to do while we're out of town. All three pets, predictably, came in and sat nearby, staring at the visitor with mild curiosity. I'm sure someone must have pets that are shy, but not us.
Then it was time for lunch at Su Hong's with Tricia Rankin, a physicist friend of John's in town to give a series of lectures at SLAC. We devoured a deliriously good buffet in which I concentrated on appetizers (which I almost never order). The Chinese sushi had me baffled, and I refused to try the boiled tripe, but otherwise I thought it a very fine selection. We talked physics and science fiction; guess which conversation I contributed to. Afterwards, she came by to see our place and the pets once again came around to visit with the guest.
When she left I had to water the garden front and back. The day slid from warm to uncomfortably hot, and I was flushed pink by the time I finished. We turned on the a/c and set all the fans to running. Dixie abandoned us to lie on the cool kitchen floor, long tongue lolling out of her mouth as she panted. I did heaps of laundry, smoothly transferring clothes from washer to dryer in a perfectly timed juggling act, wondering once again why it is John's pile of socks always seems to get bigger while my pile of socks seem to diminish. There's some evil principle at work here, I just know it.
At three, Trish LeDoux came by and we abandoned ourselves to a long summer's afternoon of talking, shopping, sipping iced coffees, and strolling the main street of Palo Alto. I marveled at the outfits people were wearing on University Avenue; no cutoffs and tank tops here, but Armani, Prada, and Jil Sander. The light in the trees was honeyed and langorous. At dusk, dozens of bats came flittering out and delighted me with their aerial acrobatics. We spoke in hushed tones of the cost of this or that house, and admitted we probably won't buy a house in our lifetimes because we both want to stay here and neither of us can imagine making the sacrifices necessary to afford a house in the Bay Area. We found a three story building with one wall nearly completely covered in trumpet vines, the orange-red blossoms almost glowing in the blue twilight. Walking up to it was like approaching a shrine to an exotic god.
Now it is nearly midnight. I am tired, but a good kind of tired. Sleeping in a freshly made bed, in a freshly cleaned house, after a day of sun and laughter is balm to the spirit.
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